Do Talk to Strangers....

While going through my drafts, I found this one, written a few years ago. Thought to share it because this was exactly the topic I wanted to write on today! So, here it is:

I met her at the clinic. She was dressed in a dark blue/ black trouser and a white T-shirt. She looked kind, yet, I had my own trepidations. I had no clue how was she going to be. As we started talking, I looked at her face and concluded that she was at least 10-12 years younger to me. I noted, absent-mindedly, how baked, brown my skin looked against her white; how wrinkled my hands looked against her young, supple and moisturised skin. I wondered if the thought of skin colour, race, or ethnicity had ever crossed her mind while treating her patients.

We didn't talk much in our first meeting except the evaluation. However, I was intrigued how such a young girl, obviously from UK (her accent gave that away!) had left her home to come to the land of sand. I wanted to know what had prompted her to do so. I wanted to know if this was a choice she had made or did it just happen to her. Was she married, or living alone here? (Us nosy Indians!! Or, more positively, we are naturally curious!!)

Our next meeting and the two more after that, and we got talking, I mean, really talking. We talked about her choice of profession, pregnancy, kids, deliveries, side effects of the same, her own aches and pains, her family, my family, and what not....and then she told me she was leaving and moving back. Her husband had been transferred. (I did think- would her husband have agreed to move, leaving his practice behind if his wife was the one being transferred- but didn't ask her.) We bade farewells and hoped to see each other again someday, and hopefully for better reasons.

As I said that bye, I wondered  how we had shared a small but warm bond. I could not help wondering again how easy it is to talk  to total strangers. Why is it that with total strangers, or people we meet by chance, we never think about any repercussions of our confessions and deepest feelings and fears while with our closest friends and family, we are worried that they will judge us, and might even share our 'secrets'  with our other 'friends' or family?

Is it similar to the comfort one draws in being anonymous, untraceable? Is it because we know that we don't know them well enough to run the risk of common friends, and hence social judgement? Or, is it  just the positive vibes that assure us? 

Yet, we make the mistake of misjudging people all so often. We regret. We promise ourselves never to trust another person again - and yet again, every now and then, someone comes along, in a new or unusual situation, full of those positive, comforting vibes, disarms us, allows us to bring our guard down, and relieve ourselves of our emotional stress- even if for a little while. 

May everyone have more such encounters! We all need a sympathetic ear every now and then, don't we?

A word of caution: however disarmed you feel, however warm the positive aura of the person might be, DO NOT give out your passwords, credit card number, CVV, your kids' personal details etc. etc. etc.- you get the drift, I hope.